This small and unassuming coin is one of the first issues of Cnidus, a city on the southern coast of Asia Minor. It was settled by colonists from Sparta around 650 BC, but the colonists departed from their forefathers’ warlike nature and turned towards less hostile practices. There was a medical school from at least 300 BC, and two of the ancient world’s most celebrated are tied to Cnidus. The first, a marble sculpture – the famous Aphrodite of Cnidus – crafted by the legendary sculptor Praxiteles of Athens around 350 BC. His original does not survive, but many copies – including a Roman version in the Vatican Museums – give us a hint the quality of the original artistry. The second great structure was the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, designed by Sostratus of Cnidus.

But this coin was struck hundreds of years before the sculpture, or the lighthouse, or the medical school, when Cnidus was a relatively small trading city on the coast of Asia Minor. The coin’s style is quintessentially Archaic – clearly developed from the rigid figures of the Geometric Period (ca. 900-700 BC), but not quite of the naturalistic human representation of the Classical age (ca. 480-336 BC). Observing Aphrodite on the reverse, we see two figures characteristic of the period’s artistic tendencies, including the large Archaic eye and a somewhat elongated nose. The coin is a charming example of an underappreciated period in Greek art.